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It’s not the lack of money that makes me cry like my heart is about to burst.
You want to know what it is?

It’s something you have or don’t more than I do, because there’s no straight finish line here.
It ticks away silently mocking our indignant ways with wasteful wars.
If you lament, it doesn’t move and while you are giddy it’s fleeting.

Don’t kill it, the management gurus will say.
Save plenty of it with online shopping, the internet will proclaim.
But the amount you have dispensed to your “friends” most times will outweigh your priorities.

It won’t wait for us to hold onto the wonders of our present,
Or reverse a heartache by putting harmful words back into the mouth.
The brutality of nostalgia is never too far away from it,

Making the ghosts of childhood fun and the near and distant future terrifyingly uncertain.
It erases all the memories of laughter and hardens the bitterness of sadness.
Yet, it hasn’t been able to beat the speed at which our thoughts travel.

Those thoughts that crease our foreheads, tell us of it’s passage.
You can choose wisely what you do with it, but you can’t save it.
Oh, you can donate it, to show that you’ve spent it well.

You can while it in tedium, arts, travel and contemplating and gorging on food,
Or waste it while judging the other driver who is checking his phone instead of driving ahead.
You can also quicken it for instant results by holding onto your breath for Chaturangas.

If I had more of it,
I would go deliver food to soldiers at the Himalayan foothills whose feet are buckling under the weight of exhaustion,
Or go clean up all the plastic in the oceans.
Oh, nonsense!
I would just pay monies for food to be delivered while I checked myself out in the phone’s mirror.

Seconds mattered when I caught a subway across town to watch a 4 hour football game.
It stood still when I felt traces of fingers on my back on those long sultry nights.
I’ve already used up almost 1/3rd of it in school, not earning any street smarts.

I do have dreams about not betraying it, sometimes even stupidly wondering what to do with it.
Or worry about my last days here not knowing what to do with all that’s left of it.
I even make silly claims of love for my children for all of posterity with it.

How significant am I? How significant are you?
How significant is our time here?
Will we pass these moments or will they pass us?

Only time will tell.
Only time will tell.

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Poetry